I believe Jay's on our team (X1)
I would really recommend giving HM another go - it really isn't too difficult anymore. We regularly get it done in about an hour, sometimes an hour and a half.
I know people complain about the glitches on Crota but they really are quite rare. I think a lot of the time, if it's not going well, people get frustrated and want to blame something so they fixate on that one attempt where the sword disappeared, or the one attempt where Crota leaps up and slams the swordman, but forget about the couple dozen other attempts that failed due to human error.
The number one reason for our group failing in attempts is due to the Swordbearer hiding away somewhere. The strategy we (and 99% of the Destiny population) use relies on the Swordbearer being visible and gun-downable from the middle ledge. If that's not the case, it usually results in a wipe.
Edit: looks like Jay mistakenly quoted your post to begin with